


Who We Choose To Be

by BurnItAllDownDahling



Series: A Family Affair [21]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Disassociation, Incest, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:54:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurnItAllDownDahling/pseuds/BurnItAllDownDahling
Summary: Nero really wants to know what would happen if he splits his human self from his demonic self as Vergil once did. Dante thinks this is a terrible idea.Dante's always right.





	Who We Choose To Be

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon prompt: "For Family Affair, So what would happen if Nero gets his demon and human side separated like Virgil, I’m sure Nero’s demon will be more funny than apocalyptic Urizen."

It's curiosity, mostly. Stupid, nagging curiosity, tickling at his brain and growing worse with time and finally tormenting him into asking for what he knows, he _knows_, he shouldn't.

And Vergil, to Nero's utter shock, agrees.

Dante is livid. "This is a bad move," he snaps. He's pacing in the middle of his black-walled vault. It's a warded, thick-walled space, ideal for this... experiment that they've come to conduct. Which might not happen at all if Dante gets his say. "This is _stupid_. The last time -- "

"Look," Nero says. "I'm not -- " He glances at Vergil, then bulls ahead. "Obsessed with power. Convinced that either of you, or anyone else, is the source of all my problems. And I'm only a _quarter_ demon. What's the worst that could happen?"

Dante throws his arms in the air. "Have you been paying attention to, like, _your whole life_?" He rounds on Vergil, who sits relaxed on the couch, with the sheathed Yamato resting across his knees. "I can't believe you're actually going to let him do this."

Vergil, who hasn't disagreed with Nero's assessment of him, tilts his head. "He's my son, Dante. When have you ever known _me_ to learn the lesson of folly without trial and painful error?"

"Oh, that's great. That's just great. You're a dumbass and he's _inherited_ your dumbassery, so that makes it fine? Great."

Nero's all nerves, and Dante's histrionics aren't helping. "Look," he says. "Just make sure my demon doesn't go anywhere. It can't, I don't know, destroy the Earth, if you two are watching it." Even saying this sounds absurd. Both Dante and Vergil have monsters in their souls, but Nero's demon is a silly, hedonistic creature, even when it's in a rage. He cannot imagine it becoming another Urizen. "And we're just going to do it for five minutes, then re-merge. Simple."

Dante groans. "Nothing is that simple. Nothing is _ever_ that simple. God, we really do have only one brain cell between us. Well, I don't want it! Take it back, one of you, please! Save us from doing this incredibly stupid thing!"

Vergil regards Dante with disdain for a moment, then apparently decides to ignore him. He sighs and gets to his feet. "Best we get on with it, then."

Nero swallows, then nods. "Yeah. Yeah, okay." It's going to be fine. They've taken every precaution. And it's only for five minutes. "Okay."

Vergil draws the Yamato. "Think of breaking a chain," he advises. "Of setting the entwined parts of yourself free from one another."

"Right. Okay. I'm -- " _Ready_, he means to say, but of course Vergil makes no concession to his nerves. There is a flicker as Vergil moves faster than even Nero's eyes can see, and then he is in front of Nero, and the terrible icy agony of being skewered hits fast and hard. A chain, Nero thinks, as he gasps and folds around the pain and shapes it with his will -- and, yes, then he feels the two parts of himself, suddenly stark and distinct within him where they have been, until now, hopelessly intermingled. A chain, suddenly snatched tight, and now_ shattering_ \--

When he returns to himself at last, a month has passed.

#

"So," Dante says. They're in the foyer of DMC. Dante's in his desk chair, and he looks extremely relieved. He's also _missing an eye_. "Glad to have you back -- together -- but quite frankly, I'm really, _really_ tempted to kill you right now. I'm gonna settle for saying I told you so, instead. Forever."

Nero, who for some reason is lying on the floor, gets up and dusts himself off, frowning in disorientation. And then. Oh. And then. He remembers.

Dear God.

He turns, slowly, to Vergil, who sits on the couch with Yamato across his knees. Vergil, who is much the same as he was when Nero last saw him, except that he is _missing an arm_. He also looks pleased to see Nero again, though he's more subtle about it. Holding himself too upright, trying too hard to appear nonchalant. But he inclines his head to Nero, with a hint of irony. "As I suggested," he intones, "some things are best learned the hard way. And what have you learned?"

"Not my demon self," Nero whispers, unbelievably horrified as he _remembers_. "That was never the part of me that I should've been afraid of."

He'd been right about that much. His demon, freed of his humanity, had become a graceful, charming, eloquent creature with long white hair and angelic white-feathered wings, and claws of smooth mother-of-pearl. It had spent the month reading poetry, offering foot massages, and otherwise doing its best to help Dante and Vergil manage without Nero. It had failed miserably, however, and the twins had come very close to another fight-to-the-death at one point. Twice.

Both times, however, they'd been interrupted by the eruption of utter chaos upon the world, as Nero's human self -- taller and broader than Dante, handsome and charming as any king, twice Nero's age and with a soul more monstrous than anything Nero had ever felt in a demon -- began consolidating power. _Without strength, you can't protect anything_, his human self had thought. And then he had killed the head of one of the biggest crime families in the north, framed someone else for the deed, taken over that family and turned its business from drugs to arcane weapons, bribed a senator, gotten an exclusive defense contract, raised a private army including human magic practitioners, and then traveled with a specially-equipped strike team into the demon realm. Dante and Vergil and Nero's demon self had then stopped him -- just -- from assassinating Zva-ad-Zum the demon king with poisoned demonsbane bullets.

"He meant to start a war," Vergil said, as Nero leaned on Dante's desk and thought about being sick. "Get humankind to fight demonkind, and destroy it or die trying. I suppose he knew _we_ would fight on humanity's side -- "

"No," Nero blurts. His human self has snorted in contempt, within him. "He thought, since they almost poisoned me after all, that humankind was actually strong enough to defeat the demons on its own. He thought now, with a weak demon king in place, would be the best time to wipe out the demon world forever. Use humanity's true strength, technology, to protect it, once and for all -- at the small, tolerable cost of millions of lives on both sides." He turned to Vergil. "He was going to kill the both of you, too. Once you stopped being useful."

Vergil looks bitterly amused. "How cliche."

Dante sighs, rubbing his face. "We were so busy being suspicious of your demon, when it manifested. It was huge at first, then it shrank down to human-size. Pretty. It was smart, too, like freaky-smart, so we figured it was too good to be true. But you were right. It's also _nice_."

"_Too_ nice," Vergil says, with palpable distaste.

"Well, yeah. Actually missed your f-bombs and attitude, kid. Your demon doesn't curse, can you believe that?" He shakes his head. "Anyway, while we were keeping an eye on the demon, your _human_ just quietly walked out. And then started tearing up the place, by which I mean, the two worlds."

Because all that is monstrous in Nero, all of his irreverence for authority and cruelty in battle and depravity in sex and the megalomaniacal tendencies he's apparently always had, all of it turns out to come from his _humanity_.

Dante sighs and gets up, coming around the desk to clap Nero on the shoulder. "But everything's fine, now. You're back. We missed you, dumbass. Also, I told you so. I'm gonna order a pizza."

Nero flinches 'round to stare at him. How can he think of pizza after all this? How can he want to share that pizza -- or anything else, ever -- with _Nero_? "Y-your eye." It's all he can manage.

Dante blinks his remaining eye, as if he'd forgotten that he's short one. "Eh, it's just an eye. Turns out when you get shot with demonsbane, it slows down our healing factor for a while. Hurts like a bitch, not gonna lie, but it's already growing back. Don't worry about it. Pepperoni or sausage?"

_"I shot you in the fucking eye?!"_

"Well, yeah. You _were_ trying to kill me. Him, though -- " Dante nodded vaguely in Vergil's direction; Vergil was on his blind side. "Seems to me _that_ was just revenge. Your human side's a petty bitch, kid."

"The arm will grow back," Vergil says calmly. He's reading a book that he's conjured from somewhere. Turning the pages left-handed, Nero notices with deep guilt.

Dante leans over to whisper, "He jerks off right-handed, and we've only had each other this whole month, so he's actually in a really shitty mood."

"Do not make me kill you, little brother. Pepperoni."

"That's two for pepperoni. Took too long, kid, sorry." Dante leans past Nero and picks up the phone. Nero stares at him, speechless and horrified, as he calls the order in.

_Missed you_, croons his demon, at the back of his mind. It speaks in its usual voice, once again a snarly inhuman thing that never speaks in complete sentences, but this time Nero can hear a clearer note within its voice -- a gentle tenor, tender and thoughtful. (Why the hell does Nero's humanity cause sentence fragments?) _Scared they would not get you back. Do not like being scared, your beast or your king. Need comfort._

_They're weak_, sneers a new voice within him, which makes Nero flinch. But he's heard this voice before, too, hasn't he? Since he became a demon lord -- picking at him whenever he lets his guard down, encouraging him to kill, to conquer, to abuse, to scheme. He thought it came from being a demon lord. It doesn't.

When Nero looks up, too shaken to think, Vergil's watching him again. Quietly, Vergil says, "'The fool who persists in his folly will become wise'... or so I've found. But the gaining of wisdom is rarely a _comfortable_ thing."

Ain't that the fucking truth.

Dante gets off the phone. "Thirty minutes. Apparently it's a busy night. Whoa. Kid, you're white as a sheet. I guess I should've ordered vegetables on the pizza, too?"

"How can you just..." Nero stares down at his hands, the hands of a stranger. "This doesn't make any sense! I didn't think -- "

"That humans could be as bad as demons?" Dante leans against the desk, shoulder brushing Nero's. "Come on, kid. You figured that out when you were seventeen. I guess you forgot, though? Probably shouldn't have." Then he reaches over, grasping one of Nero's hands and pulling on it, gently but inexorably, until Nero turns to face him. Dante's eye is serious, above his smile. "And you're more human than any of us. Guess we'd better be glad your demon's as strong as it is."

The demon utters a pleased purr at the back of Nero's mind. Nero shakes his head, snatching his hand free of Dante's. He glares at Vergil. "_Your_ human wasn't a fucking monster!"

"No, he was a scheming, amoral sorcerer who thought nothing of throwing you and Dante into harm's way, to repair his mistakes," Vergil says, closing the book and favoring Nero with a look of disapproval. "Also, he had questionable taste in hairstyles."

"I don't know, I kind of liked the whole post-goth look," Dante says.

"You would."

Nero can't take it anymore. "This isn't a fucking _joke_!" He's shouting, staring at them, shaking. "How can you -- fucking -- You've seen what I am! I tried to, to -- "

"To commit murder on an incalculable scale," Vergil says, with relentless ruthlessness. Nero flinches as Vergil closes his book, sets it aside, and gets to his feet -- with just the slightest hint of awkwardness as the stump of his arm twitches. Irritated, Vergil glances down at it, and then he concentrates intently for a moment. An instant later, an arm materializes out of nothingness, filling the empty sleeve of his coat. He lifts it, flexes his new fingers, seems satisfied, and then comes over to Nero. "Your other self sought to claim the throne of the demon realm, as a _human_. To defy your fate as a weak, mortal creature, and achieve a thing that any of us would have thought impossible."

Nero curls his lip at Vergil. "You sound like you _admire_ that fucking _thing_."

"Why wouldn't I?" Vergil reaches up to clasp a hand around the back of Nero's neck. "Don't you admire such strength?"

"No! He was _evil_!"

"As any of us can be." Vergil gives him a little shake. "Foolishness, Nero. Did you think yourself immune to human nature?" 

The question throws Nero for a loop because... well, shit. He guesses he did. But as he stands there reeling from Vergil's question, Dante's hands grasp his shoulders, and Nero feels Dante press his face into Nero's hair. 

"Missed this," Dante says, breathing his scent with satisfaction. "Also, kid? You _do_ remember that challenging impossible odds and trying to change the universe is a family tradition, right? Three generations strong, now."

Nero tries to turn a glare on Dante, but Vergil won't let him. "Both of you," he groans. "You're both _ridiculous_."

"Yeah, yeah. But at least we were willing to do whatever it took to get you back to the way you were, so maybe you can show us some gratitude without the attitude." Dante inhales his scent again, this time with a little rumble of enjoyment. "He's hysterical, Verg. Shouldn't we calm him down?"

"I'm not certain that will be possible. He's been through a significant psychological shock." Vergil considers Nero for a moment -- then begins to remove his own coat. "I suppose we'll have to settle for just silencing his whining, until he's over it."

_Both, yes, missed both, so much,_ purrs Nero's demon, in delight. _They did not want me, alone. Wanted **you**, whole._

_Their love makes them complacent._ Nero's human smiles in his mind, and it is a cold, sharp-toothed thing. _Let them ease their fears in your body for a time, worship your wholeness. It will blind them to your real threat._

"You," Nero snarls, stiffening. "_Shut the fuck up._"

Dante pauses in surprise. Vergil, however, sighs. "The voices will grow quieter with time," he says. He steps closer, cupping Nero's face, while Dante's hands ease the coat off his shoulders. And while Nero would never dare to consider his father's touch _intentionally_ comforting, nevertheless he takes comfort from it. "They won't be _silent_, now that you've allowed each a life of its own... but they will eventually become quieter. More a part of you, less their own distinct selves. Less irritating."

Nero tries to imagine V and Urizen arguing in his father's mind, and the thought is so absurd (and horrifying) that it eases some of his distress. At least he isn't alone in this. He finds himself relaxing more as Dante sighs in contentment and then nips the back of his neck, which sends a little thrum of pleasure through him. It's not really lust, not quite, in him or them. It's just that it's been a hard month for all of them, and demons don't really do verbal-only comfort.

And that, more than anything else, starts to settle Nero's agitation. Because... well. It may be his demon self that seeks to comfort them, and it might be his human component that selfishly enjoys being the singular focus of their desire at times like this, but it's him, the whole Nero, that loves them.

"We've only got thirty minutes," he grumbles, around his father's kisses.

"Just gotta bitch about _something_, don't you?" Dante chastises him for this with a harder bite just beneath his ear, which makes him shiver.

"There are two of us," Vergil says, just a little testily. Fleetingly Nero remembers he's been short a lover and a hand for a while now. "We don't have to stop. When the pizza comes, Dante will go get it, while I hold your attention."

Nero feels Dante bristle at once. It's a bigger sign than anything they could say of how long a month it's been, because Dante doesn't usually challenge Vergil in bed. They're both feeling possessive. "Or maybe _you_ can get the pizza, while _I_ keep fucking him."

Vergil goes still. "That's unacceptable, Brother."

God, they must have been at each others' throats, this whole time. Nero sighs in frustration. "Father goes to get the pizza," he declares. "He gets my mouth, though." It's a compromise. Dante loves Nero's mouth.

Vergil smirks, and Dante, predictably, whines. "It's been a month, kid. A _month_ without that sweet mouth of yours, and you're going to make me wait more?"

"Keep bitching and I'll make you _take turns_," Nero snaps. He kicks off his shoes. "And you know who'll get to go first."

Dante groans and mutters something suspiciously close to "little asshole." Vergil chuckles softly, kisses Nero with remarkable tenderness -- and then leans around him to kiss Dante as well. Nero hears Dante grumble a little more, but it works; he relaxes, mollified by Vergil's attention. Vergil purrs, pleased. "It _is_ good to have him back, though, Brother, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It is." Just because Dante's an asshole too, though, he reaches around to unbuckle Nero's pants and ease them down, cock already nudging itself against Nero's cleft. By this, Nero knows he means to start fucking Nero right here on his desk, where the pizza delivery person will probably see everything. Even Vergil -- fastidious, appearance-conscious Vergil -- has shrugged off his coat and is unbuckling his belt, equally determined to make the most of what little uninterrupted time he's got. He likes Nero's mouth, too.

Later, then, Nero will process everything that's happened, and the uglier events that he knows await him within his human self's memories. He'll chew on his demon self's new maturity, and its delight in being valued for itself, for the first time, by all of them. Eventually he will go to some demon-infested hot spot and kill everything he finds, to reassure himself that he isn't one of them -- and then he'll make himself visit a stock market floor or something, some place of human selfishness and cruelty, and thank God that he isn't fully human either. 

And then he will come home, to the only place that will ever matter to _all_ of him, and to the only people who embrace everything he is or can be. Until then, he pulls his beloveds close, grateful beyond words for their strength and faith in him. Then he lets them remind him, kiss by kiss and touch by touch and inch by inch, of who he _chooses_ to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Yyyyyeah, Nonnny, IDK if this counts as "funny." Sorry! But to my mind, it makes sense that Nero's demon, freed of three-quarters of itself, would be wildly different from its usual form and persona. It's literally the weaker part of Nero, the part that's always had family and love, and the part of him that's had less time to experience and be corrupted by the world, so it would be in many ways the "good" part of him. Whereas his human self -- abandoned by his mother, barely tolerated by the people of Fortuna, exploited by the Order, repeatedly shown that humans are selfish fucks who can't be trusted not to stab you in the back -- is naturally going to be a total bastard. (Just like daddy.) I made it older than Nero because Vergil's the one with an inner manchild; Nero has an old soul, of necessity. I made it monstrous because I've always thought there was something a little fucked up about Nero. Canonically it only shows in battle, when he transforms from a kind-hearted, surprisingly sweet guy into a disturbingly _creative_ sadist, but it's always there in him, and has been since long before his demon awakened. Like, have you ever paid attention to the look on his face when he's doing his little Devil Bringer beatdowns? That boy ain't right. But we love him anyway.
> 
> (Apologies for the hint of V-hate in this. I honestly think V is creepy af, and I have no idea why people insist that he's somehow the "good" side of Vergil. IMO, he's just the less-visibly-awful side of Vergil, and in any other game, _he_ would be the primary antagonist. I do, however, actually like his post-goth look. That coat! Totally had to steal it for Nero.)
> 
> Work's gotten quiet again! Might do a few more prompts in the next few days. Then back to work, sigh.


End file.
